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Monday, March 26, 2012

My son was on spring break last week and we able to get our first game in Friday night. Mid-war North Africa. I had spent most of the week leading up to the game painting three Valentine II's and three Matilda II's, making lists, reviewing the rules and getting the table ready. I wanted to do an after action report with Batrepper, but it quickly became apparent learning how to play would make that difficult. Hopefully, next time.

We loaded up on Tacos my awesome wife cooked and headed in the garage. We had a lot of fun! The game was quite competitive considering it was our first even though the rules presented some challenges at times due to our inexperience. We played Free-For-All, a good place to start we thought. I played British and my son the DAK.

I tried to make well rounded lists that would give us an opportunity to learn.

The lists:

My son on the right was the attacker. Our setup:

My plan was to dominate the right flank and grab the objective but the Panzer III J's were in the way. Initially things were going my way as I had some success against the German tanks. It went downhill from there with the confident veteran tanks having an edge over my confident trained tanks. It seemed like the Germans may have been a little luckier, or was it Rommel's superior tactics? Our artillery were pinning machines. We didn't smoke once which I thought was a little odd, I'll have to think about that more.

Trust the Italian truck to get stuck in the only deep sand in the area:

Oh yeah, it's going my way...

I loose a Matilda II...

Not much action on the left flank:

It's not looking so good for me. I've lost the ability to destroy tanks. But the platoon on the left has Sticky Sticky Bombs and I'm going to assault the Panzers to win the game! I pass the tank terror test, yes. Out comes the assault flowchart from the WWPD website. Defensive fire--what 15 shots from three veteran tanks. Six hits and I look two feet shorter and my unit is two inches further away. Is that right: main gun ROF 3 and then 1 for each MG? What was I thinking?

I try a different approach but get shot up:

The Universal Carriers fall victim to the Pak38:

I get shot to pieces and the Panzer III's finish off my tanks and take the objective. We had a blast with some good laughs and trash talking.

A few rules we had issues with (I'm hoping I have these right):

Does a 2iC re-roll motivation tests? No he doesn't as far as I can tell.

Observers. We forgot they can't spot for other platoons without both having staff teams.

The Panzer III defensive fire shot count. Is it really five. The rule book on page 111says use machine guns against infantry?